Cannondale Corporation, the assignee of the present invention, introduced as its first product the world's first bicycle trailer over twenty years ago. Over the years, bicycle trailers have attained increasing popularity for transporting articles of all kinds, such as camping gear, groceries and other inanimate cargos of every description, and small children.
For balance as a bicycle is ridden (side to side swaying) and for maneuvering (turning and traversing changing ground slopes), it is necessary for the bicycle to articulate universally relative to the trailer. On the other hand, essentially free universal articulation between the bicycle and the trailer results in considerable handling problems for the cyclist and excessive yawing and pitching motions of the trailer. This has long been recognized and solved by providing hitches for coupling bicycles to bicycle trailers that incorporate resilient elements for restraining motions of the trailer relative to the bicycle.
The hitches used by Cannondale and others have joined a tongue on the trailer to the bicycle seat post. More recently, bicycle trailers have been connected to bicycles by hitches that are mounted on the chain stay of the bicycle frame opposite from the chain side. (In virtually all bicycles, the chain is on the right side, so the trailer hitches are attached to the left chain stay.) The presently known hitches for attaching trailers to bicycle chain stays are not entirely satisfactory from the points of view of optimal function, ease of attaching them to and detaching them from the bicycle, and adaptability to chain stays of various diameters.